Email charging plan to beat spam

AOL and Yahoo plan to charge fees of up to one cent (US) per message to
those that sign up for the service.

Paying the fees means that messages will not go through spam filters,
are guaranteed to arrive and will bear a stamp of authenticity.

Both AOL and Yahoo said they would start offering the service within the
next few months.

Cash call

The optional charging plan is meant for those organisations that send a
lot of e-mail and do not want their messages mistaken for spam.
Organisations that do not want to sign up will be able to send mail the
old-fashioned way.

The service is also intended to act as protection against so-called
phishing gangs that send e-mail messages disguised to look like they
come from legitimate organisations.

....

The service is intended to tackle spam by making it expensive to send
messages. Currently so many e-mail messages can be sent for free that
tiny response rates mean spammers can easily make money.

The idea of charging for e-mail is just one of many methods used to
tackle spam. Yahoo has also signed up for a system which only accepts
e-mail from net sites it knows are legitimate senders of mail.

This is intended to tackle those spammers, up to 70% according to some
estimates, that use hijacked home PCs to route their e-mail messages.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4684942.stm